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Coach's Show Summary-Week of the Cal Game

Coach Urban Meyer looked ahead to the Buckeyes first road game of the season, Saturday’s kickoff against Cal, on 97.1 The Fan. Here are highlights of the hour he spent chatting with hosts Paul Keels and Jim Lachey, as well as a handful of callers.

On quarterback Braxton Miller’s sprained MCL: “Braxton threw a little bit yesterday, had a great workout this morning in the pool, and feels pretty good…It’s going to be a game-time decision, because it’s healing at a rapid pace.”

“Today’s a very, very important day to get them hydrated. I’m going to put a 9 o’clock curfew on them tonight. They’re going to bed early. What happened this week was what we needed, a good hard week. Today we’ve got to make sure they’ve got their legs back and get their bodies ready to go, because the defense is going to have to play 100 plays.”

“I think last year [Cal was] faster than us. I think we’ve improved our team speed through recruiting and development.”

“The one year I spent away from coaching, I missed that worse than anything, just trying to figure out the locker room.”

“For you to get the desired outcome or desired performance, everybody wants to talk about, ‘Well, let’s make sure there’s great teamwork.’ Okay, before there’s great teamwork, you have to have commitment of the people involved, and before you get commitment from those people, they have to trust you.”

“When do you turn it off? As a football coach or a teammate, when do you say, ‘I’m not a teammate anymore,’ or when you do say, ‘I’m not a coach.’ Will you shut your cell phone off? When you go to sleep, you’re allowed to put it on vibrate, but our coaches–even when you go on vacation, you leave. It’s like saying, ‘I’m not going to be a parent here for this week. I’m going to take it off.’ Well, good luck. When you get home, there’s probably going to be some issues you’re going to have to deal with.”

“If Braxton is not ready to go, he won’t play. If he is ready to play, I have to make a decision on will he start the game, or will he just come in, in certain situations or if we need him.”

“Kenny Guiton last January, a year ago January? Done. He’s out. He really didn’t belong here at Ohio State. Now he’s a guy that, I’m sure they’re going to write a folk song about him some day around here.”

“I love recruiting a kid who’s tied in with his coach. I’m not a big fan of recruiting the guy who has his little mentor or his third uncle. We don’t usually get involved with those guys.”

On facing Cal: “There’s going to be chaos. They’re a very fast-tempo team…We’re the visiting team obviously. You need some maturity, and you need experience to settle things down. And Shazier gives us that, and certainly Christian Bryant, CJ Barnett and [Bradley] Roby. You need those guys.”

“The rules, and we actually–the Big Ten officials–contacted the Pac-12, because [Cal is] going to go so fast, when they come running the players on, you’ve got to start matching substitution; and if you do, they’ll sit over the ball. If you don’t, they’ll just keep going…You have 4-6 seconds that they’ll stand over the ball, but you have to start your substitution. If you don’t, then you’re caught.”

The Coach’s Show airs Thursdays at noon on 97.1 The Fan. You can also access the podcast here.